Humans must change behaviour to save bees, vital for food production

– UN report March 2011 – The potentially disastrous decline in bees, a vital pollinating element in food production for the growing global population, is likely to continue unless humans profoundly change their ways, from the use of insecticides to air pollution, according to a United Nations report released today.

“The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century,” UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner said. “The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.”…ARTICLE CONTINUES….Humans must change behaviour to save bees, vital for food production – UN

Nature – The Great Teacher

Michael O’Malley, vice-president of human capital at Sibson Consulting, took up beekeeping as a hobby and was surprised to find that it provided insights into his day job of advising on risk management.

WE NEED OUR BEES, ALIVE NOT DEAD

O’Malley writes in the Harvard Business Review that beehives are structured for long-term growth and as a result the pollen gatherers have become masters of risk management, unlike many “too big to fail” banks.

He writes: “When a colony gets too large, it becomes operationally unwieldy and grossly inefficient and the hive splits. Eventually, risk is spread across many hives and revenue sources in contrast to relying on one big, vulnerable “super-hive” for sustenance.”

Other lessons he has taken from his hobby are that queen bees do not appear to be subject to short-term quarterly pollen and nectar targets. “No queen bee is under pressure for quarterly pollen and nectar targets. The hive is only beholden to the long term. Indeed, beehives appear to underperform at times because they could collect more,” he writes.

Instead, decision-making is decentralised with individual bees empowered to take decisive action, bolstered by a “disciplined career development program”: “By the time bees are sent into the field, they are prepared — and, even then, novice foragers are frequently accompanied by veterans who show them how to efficiently and productively move among, and work, the flowers.”……More

See full film here:

THE FORERUNNER TO “FOOD INC.”

“Life Running Out of Control” by Bertram Verhaag is an absolute MUST WATCH documentary Movie. Produced in 2004 it explains in depth how, even back then, genetic engineering was quietly taking over our global food and animal supply and had been for decades, reducing the gene pools, to a point where it may be irreversible.

The human, animal and environmental health risks are addressed here as well as the dangers and ethics of altering the genes of our food and animals — and thus us. Everything is interconnected and altering the genes of nature has a ripple affect on all of nature, our environment and us as we are clearly witnessing and experiencing today. (See “Urgent Memo To The World” on this blog here)

If you want to know why the environmental and food activists are protesting…this will fill you in. Let’s hope it is not too late.

The Symbiotic Relationships of Life

“Human beings have fabricated the illusion that in the 21st century they have the technological prowess to be independent of nature. Bees underline the reality that we are more, not less, dependent on nature’s services in a world of close to 7 billion people”

10 March 2011 – The potentially disastrous decline in bees, a vital pollinating element in food production for the growing global population, is likely to continue unless humans profoundly change their ways, from the use of insecticides to air pollution, according to a United Nations report released today.“The way humanity manages or mismanages its nature-based assets, including pollinators, will in part define our collective future in the 21st century,” UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Executive Director Achim Steiner said. “The fact is that of the 100 crop species that provide 90 per cent of the world’s food, over 70 are pollinated by bees.” READ ON: Humans must change behaviour to save bees, vital for food production – UN report.

The great bee die-off is not such a mystery after all:

Industrial agriculture has stressed our pollinators to the breaking point.

iStockphoto

“The nation’s great bee die-off has provoked a furious debate: What has caused a third of all commercial honeybee colonies to perish each year since 2006? Although widespread bee deaths have occurred before, the current sharp decline is different. This time some bees have simply vanished, abandoning their hives. The phenomenon, known as colony collapse disorder (CCD), has been attributed in part to the same viral and bacterial infections, pesticide poisonings, and mite infestations that devastated bees in the past.” pdjmooWho Killed All Those Honeybees? We Did | Agriculture | DISCOVER Magazine http://ow.ly/vjli

And …

Are Cell Phone Towers Honey Bees’ Next Big Threat?

New Study says “Yes”

CAN WE SURVIVE WITHOUT OUR POLLINATING HONEY BEES?As if honey bees don’t have enough to worry about right now, it seems that cell phone towers may be problematic for the insects. According to a new study, a rapid drop in the bee population in Kerala, India is the result of recently installed cell phone towers, and could cause a complete collapse of bee populations within 10 years.

“If all mankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed ten thousand years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.” E. O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize Winner, Socio-Biologist.

by Pam Jacob @pdjmoo

Have we asked too much of Nature and her inhabitants and the myriad of symbiotic relationships all species needed to maintain balance and generate our healthy food supply? We have pushed our cows, beef cattle, chickens, turkeys, pigs and fish over the edge, far beyond their natural capacity to breed and produce within their given maturation processes. We have created a poisoned, industrialized food system that no longer is healthy or nutritious and, in the process, we have objectified the very life forms essential to our food supply. They have become a dollar figure, a number on a balance sheet, to do with what we will. A great tragedy is unfolding before our eyes. We have lost respect for Nature as our partners in life and, as such, lost respect for each other, and ourselves waiving our responsibility for our essential role in our own life support systems.

Witness the beautiful, tiny bees. A little bee is just as important in its own right as you and I in the greater scheme of things…perhaps even more important. Maybe their little immune systems could no longer assimilate all the pesticides, insecticides and GMO pollen we impose on their digestion systems, and their stressful, forced artificial way of life. http://tinyurl.com/ng2oprRead the rest of this entry »

Please stop Monsanto – and their bedfellows – They’re killing us and our planet- and now the four companies—Monsanto, Syngenta, Dupont, and Bayer—that own the global market for GM seeds/pesticides/insecticides are colluding and combining technologies . http://tinyurl.com/klgeyh

Surely this is approaching an anti-trust and monopoly issue? Too big to fail?!

The ongoing battle between GMO, pesticides and insecticides and Organic farmers clearly shows that Monsanto has all its bases covered in case of lawsuits from farmers, some due to crop spraying drifting onto organic farms. (shell corporations with no assets) Monsanto can squash an organic farm with one waft of the wind. This article explains a little about one incident http://www.grist.org/article/2009-07-16-an-iowa-cropduster-can-squash-an-organic-farm/

Mr. President, while you’re working so hard on health reform, I respectfully request you look into the causes and preventative health measures that requires the Monsanto’s (and the Dow’s) of our world to stop poisoning our planet and food and water supply making tens of millions of people sick, all over the planet, with cancer and other horrible terminal and life-threatening illnesses, driving up medical costs because it is in our food, water supply, household products, personal care items, etc.
And that includes our children who are exposed to these GMOs, artificial hormones, antibiotics, pesticides, and insecticides even while in the womb, creating weakened immune systems and resistance to antibiotic treatment: Article: Drug-resistant bacteria were eating holes in the lungs of 7-week-old Madeline Reimer of Batavia. The most powerful antibiotics available could not stop them.